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European Parliament calls on EU leaders to step up EU climate action

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Category: Press Releases

Published: 14 March 2019

In today’s vote on its resolution on the EU’s long-term climate strategy, the European Parliament called for achieving net zero emissions as early as possible and by 2050 at the latest and increasing the EU’s 2030 climate target to 55 percent emission cuts compared to 1990 levels.

“The vote shows that a wave of youth-led climate protests starts to make politicians get serious about fighting climate change. By calling for higher climate targets, parliamentarians demonstrated that they listen to the people and understand the dangers that climate change poses to everyone’s well-being. Still, what the Parliament is calling for should only be the floor and not the ceiling of enhanced actions. More is needed to bring European efforts closer to what is required for limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C.”

MEPs urged European leaders to support the increase of the 2030 and 2050 targets at the special EU Summit in Sibiu in May 2019, so that an agreement on the strategic long-term vision can be reached before the UN Secretary General Climate Summit in September 2019, where all countries are expected to put forward new commitments for more climate action.

The strategy will also be discussed by European leaders’ debate at the European Council on 21 and 22 March. The meeting of EU governments takes place only a week after tomorrow’s Global Climate Strike for Future when young people across the world are taking to the streets to urge those in power to ramp up their actions and protect them against dangerous climate change.

Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe is Europe's leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change. With over 150 member organisations from 35 European countries, representing over 1.700 NGOs and more than 40 million citizens, CAN Europe promotes sustainable climate, energy and development policies throughout Europe.